Qualifying day at Albert Park is set to be a scorcher

Qualifying is all about just one thing: seeing the fastest drivers and cars in motorsport leave all their excuses in their garages to see who will be on the front row of the grid for Sunday’s opening race of the 2025 Formula 1 World Championship.

The teams will have their final chance to sort out their packages in the third one-hour Practice session, set to start at 12:30 p.m.

After that, there are just two hours to wait before the drivers prepare to climb aboard for the all-important three-stage Qualifying session, which will start at 4:00 p.m.

Friday saw Ferrari and McLaren fighting for top honours, with Red Bull oddly off the pace.

That may not mean much if Sunday’s race is wet but, for Qualifying, it looks like a battle between Charles Leclerc and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

Keep an eye out, too, for new Williams driver Carlos Sainz (and 2024 Albert Park winner) and Racing Bulls star Yuki Tsunoda.

For many fans, Saturday can be the best spectator day of the season. The on-track action starts with two Qualifying sessions for the MSS Security Melbourne SuperSprint.

The 10-minute sessions start at 9:05 a.m. to determine the grid for the third Supercars race. Then, there is a 10-minute break before the second session, which sets the Race 4 grid, at 9:25 a.m. 

The third race, sure to be action-packed after what fans saw on Thursday and Friday, will start at 5:35 p.m. and be held over 19 laps. On Friday, Cameron Hill took his first win and Matt Stone Racing's first 1-2 result. Which team will step up to take them on?

The international support races kick off at 11:15 p.m., with the opening Sprint race for the rising stars of Formula 3, which will run over 20 laps. Mexican Santiago Ramos and Peruvian Matías Zagazeta will share the front row, while Trident Motorsport pair Rafael Câmara and Noah Stromsted, who actually qualified fastest and second-fastest, come through from the sixth row of the inverted top-12 grid. 

For Formula 2 – and remember, a quarter of the F1 grid were in F2 as recently as last season – there is a lot to take in. Grid penalties for testing technical breaches have turned the grid upside down, but Italian Gabriele Mini was fastest for Prema Racing, taking pole ahead of Frenchman Victor Martins.

There is also the third Porsche Carrera Cup race, and after what we have seen on Thursday and Friday, it will be worth waiting for (until 6:35 p.m.). Harri Jones and Jackson Walls each have won a race, and many bragging rights are on the line.